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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

I put this quilt on the frame last night. I was not sure what I wanted to do and the piecer said that I could do whatever I wanted. So I decide to play with a new border I had seen. It is a freehand ribbon design that I found in Darlene Epp's Pocket Guide to Freehanding.

Here's a picture from the back of the quilt. I am really enjoying doing freehand work.

Another same that I tried on this quilt is roses. Due to the fabric on the front of the quilt I could not get a good picture, but I was able to get a close up on the back of the quilt. I quilted whimsy with roses in the floral toile sections of the quilt and whimsy with hearts in the heart sections of the quilt. I isolated a heart in the light green squares because the quilting in those squares will actually show due to the color of the thread. I also did a c wave in the small inner border.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Here is proof that I am not a photographer. I am having issues getting pictures that show the quilting on my quilts. OK, so the quilt's fabric is a little wild and I am sure that that is not helping, but you should have seen us trying flashlights and other lights to get side light on the quilt so that you could at least see a little of the quilting.I did this free hand and it has swirls and sun rays on it. I had a blast quilting this quilt.

Getting a picture of the whole quilt is going to be hard due to the size. It is an oversized King.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

I dropped off the 2 charity quilts while I was at guild on Thursday. I even showed my completed Drunkard's Path during show and tell.

I picked up 2 more quilt tops and backings at the Safe Child table. Friday I quilted both of them and did complete machine bindings on them. I turned them in this morning at the guilds charity workshop. I wanted the quilting to kind of disappear on the first on so I did an all over meander

The second one was done in Christmas Fabrics, so I did Whimsy with holly leaves. I had a lot of fun quilting both of the quilts and have 3 more to quilt. Two that I pieced during the work shop today and one that another quilter pieced.

I finally finished piecing a king sized Drunkard's Path quilt that I have been working on for the past few years. See, I still piece. :)

It is all batiks and very scrappy. I decide that I did not want to use a formal layout so I just let the pieces make partial circles through out the quilt. I put muslin on my frame and started playing with freehand designs and decide to quilt it with swirls and suns.

I put the quilt on the frame on Friday was able to freehand the whole quilt in one day. Boy was it fun. I really liked doodling with the quilting machine. I put the binding on Saturday morning and had it hand sewn on the other side by Sunday evening. Now all I have to do is decide on what I want on the label.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Yesterday, Matt and I added the zippers to my leaders. I was dreading do this, but it turn out to be much easier than I thought. And boy do I love my zippers! I loaded and quilted both of the charity quilts today. They are small quilts, one is 40 inches square and the other about 38 inches square. I quilted whimsy with hearts on the first and did a meander on the second and a scrolling feather in the small outer boarder.

Matt also added a hanging fluorescent light fixture above my longarm. The guy at Home Depot could not believe that we were buying their cheapest fixture and most expensive tubes. We put OTT lite tubes in it and it is WONDERFUL! Not really my decorating style, but at least I can see to quilt. We could not decide on what to do long term, so we decided to take care of the issue in a way that we could take the fixture down if we every decide to sell the house.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

I went to Ye Olde Quilt Shoppe in Greensboro, NC for training on my new machine. Joanne and Kelly are a hoot! I learn some new things and got to play on their machine. Joanne was very informative about the business side of quilting and shared a lot of things that have worked for her. I really enjoyed my time at their store and am looking forward to going back over for a couple of the Wild Women classes in March.Yesterday I finished the 3rd quilt on my new system. I will try to post pictures later, but I am not sure how well they will show the quilting. I did lots of template practice on this quilt and even tried a feather design in the sashing. With the dark backing I put on this quilt and the blue thread on blue fabric for the sashing you can not really see the design in the sashing on either side in a photo. But I was surprised at how well my first attempt at this design worked out. The blocks took me a while, but the sashing went really fast.

I have 2 charity quilts to do next and will either do a panto or freehand edge to edge like whimsy. They are going to be hard to load because the backing fabric is only about 2 inches larger than the quilt so I have very little wiggle room for attaching them to the frame. I am going to sew waste fabric on the top and bottom to attach to the leaders and see if I can get the tops to float that way.